MY STORY
I am strong and I am vulnerable. I am a learner of life and I constantly evolve
‘I am strong and I am vulnerable. I am a learner of life and I constantly evolve. I am no different from you.
What separates me from you is that I have set my life in order to be in a position to help you for a living. I have the knowledge, the time, the energy for this, and it is my calling.’
I used to identify myself with my sports results, my career, my athletic body. They helped me feel safer, providing some sort of comforting proof that ‘I am enough’. It did help for a while until things started to crumble:
First burnout at 39. On the verge of a second burnout at 43 and after several panic attacks, I decided to leave my international banking career.
10 times Ironman Triathlon finisher, including 4 times Ironman Triathlon World Championship qualifier. I thought these titles would define me forever. I was wrong. Around 2013, I started to get severe intestinal issues, then generalized inflammation, followed by chronic fatigue. The last straw was such terrible constant brain fog that I thought I had early dementia. I became, in my mind’s eye, a ‘nobody’.
Add to this the reality of aging that I desperately tried to deny until I couldn’t anymore, and the decease of two of my closest family members.
With these ingredients and not much to protect me from myself, depression engulfed me, and it was bad, really bad. But I kept fighting. How? By exploring ways to cure, mentally, physically, energetically. Getting my health back became my first job. All this energy that I used for work and for endurance sports was channeled into finding ways to heal. That’s how I learned so much, how I experienced such a variety of practices. That’s how I raised my level of knowledge and consciousness.
I have now learned to make peace with my story. It was brutal to go from being one of the fastest triathletes in Asia (where I lived at the time) to waking up exhausted for years and needing to nap twice a day, to having all my muscles burn from inflammation and not being able to climb stairs, to losing any sense of pleasure in life, expecting nothing, looking forward to nothing. I now understand that it is part of my journey.
Coming back from the half-dead, I found my calling: I want to help. Help what, whom, how? Help the athlete struggling with age, loss of self-confidence or sudden lack of motivation. Help the runner come back from injury stronger than ever, by using his time off to strengthen what he neglected. Help the triathlete get rid of his usual bout of panic before the swim mass start. Help the exercise-addict reinstall balance in his life. Help the alpha male recognize his vulnerability and transform it into a strength. Help with exercise-induced disordered eating. Help to better deal with stress, from sports and from life.